6 March – Anti-Casualisation Day of Action

On Wednesday 6th March UCU is holding an Anti-Casualisation Day of Action. This day will be a platform for publicizing the issues associated with the growing over-use of fixed-term contracts and the proliferation of poorly-paid and poorly-valued casualised positions in UK academia. We will be spending the day holding information stalls and running events to raise awareness of these problems, and to inspire colleagues on casualised contracts to join our union and help us in our local bargaining efforts.

What is happening at Southampton:

1. 11:00 to 14:00 – We are running two information stalls to be run at the Highfield and Avenue Campuses, at these stalls you will be able to ask about national UCU policy and current local branch priorities with respect to Fixed Term Contracts.

We will also have a large variety of campaign materials, flyers, posters, and stickers available which we encourage you to pass along to colleagues and put around your workplace to show your support. If you’d like to become involved in our anti-casualisation campaigns, we will be happy to advise you on how to join our efforts!

2. 15:00 to 17:00 –We will be running a workshop called Casualisation and Academic Careers, to be held in building 34/3001. The workshop will feature several different speakers:

—Dr Joe Viana, Southampton UCU Fixed-Term Contract Representative, will explain why you should get involved in our anti-casualisation efforts and the challenges we face in this area;

—Dr Eric Silverman, Southampton UCU President, will talk about our extensive local bargaining agenda on this issue and will give a summary of the national picture;

—Dr Julie Reeves, from the University of Southampton Professional Development Unit, will detail how the University aims to support the career development of researchers and academics on fixed-term contracts;

—Dr Jenny Rohn of the Science is Vital Campaign, our special guest speaker, will discuss the Campaign’s grassroots efforts to promote the importance of a strong science base to the UK’s economy and international reputation. For more information, please visit the Campaign’s website. In particular, we recommend reading their report titled Careering Out Of Control, which does a fantastic job of summarising the current unsustainable nature of the academic career path.

Please do come and join us for the Day of Action! The issue of casualisation affects all of us — it forces thousands of our colleagues to endure job insecurity, poor work-life balance, and high stress levels; it reduces the productivity of our academic teams and causes us to lose promising talent and valuable expertise; and it splits academia against itself, creating inequality and animosity between permanent staff and casualised staff.

The academic career structure is becoming increasingly dominated by casualised contracts, and we must act now to protect our friends and colleagues!

We will be using the attached poster (AntiCas Poster) to promote the event and encourage academics on casualised contracts to join us on the day. If you feel able, please do print out a copy and place it on your door so that your colleagues can see what we have planned.

The national UCU office has also provided a lot of excellent flyers and other materials for the Day of Action, which you can find here.

Southampton UCU will have plenty of hard copies of these materials available closer to the day, so please contact us if you require any copies to distribute in your workplace.